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Quote: "Film is a visual medium and movies are made to be watched, not read. "

Even at 12 or 13, I always preferred to watch a movie in its original language (whatever the language was) rather than dubbed. This is not at all an "elitist attitude" - in fact, at 12 I just didn't know what means the world "elitist", I think. It's just common sense. Nobody has any right to "judge" a movie if he just saw a dubbed version. I laugh when I heard people speaking of their favorite foreign actor - when they only saw moving images of him/her, but never heard his/her voice, which is 50% of his/her "talent".
Now, if somebody just like to watch movies, for the story and not for the actors, a dubbing is OK - but in this case, no comments about the thespians, please...
This is my big problem with - for instance - Italian movies, which are always post-synchronized, and most of the time by different people even if the dubbed person was Italian. I love "I tre volti della paura", but I still miss Karloff's voice when I watch the movie, so I also have the American version just for that - even if this version is the inferior one.

And incidentally, Edward - you just forgot to mention that, in such countries like Holland, dubbing simply DOESN'T exist. All the foreign movies are shown in their original language, with Dutch subs. And everyone watch, and enjoy these foreign movies. Of course, many of these people can understand English - but I'm speaking of movie of all nationalities.
In France, some of the Universal classics simply weren't dubbed during their theatrical release. Like "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" for instance. When I saw it in 1956, people on any age were in the theater. In spite of the "lines to read"...

Quote: " If anything, they went out of business because not enough consumers in modern society are adventurous enough to explore foreign films. Or, for that matter, anything shot in B&W. Again, their loss."

THIS is the main problem, Ben. These "modern audiences" share a total lack of curiosity. During the years of the Paris Festival of Fantasy & SF Films, the "Grand Rex" was forced to refuse people, as the theater was full in spite of his 2,000 seats (or something). And not only the movies where shown in their original languages, but some of them were WITHOUT any subtitling. And this Festival lasted from 1972 to the mid-1980s...